Email List Cleaning: 4 Ways That Translate to Sales

Your email list is a great source for gaining new business by nurturing clients and establishing relationships with prospects. But because of dirty data, many companies aren’t getting as many sales from their purchased email list as they could be.

Though cleaning your list takes time, you must do it with an eye towards moving prospects down the funnel and closing business. There are a few specific tactics that will help.

Use a lower-tier email marketing provider

Email automation companies have varying standards for how clean they require customer data to be. Don’t make the mistake of taking a list that hasn’t been cleaned to a provider with high cleanliness standards, then getting your account banned or suspended because you sent too many messages that bounced or got marked as spam.

Instead, find an email automation provider with lower cleanliness standards and use their service as you clean your list. Once you are confident that it’s in good shape, you can transfer your contacts to an email provider with higher standards on data accuracy.

Find a third-party provider that both appends and verifies

Many B2B lead generation companies offer huge lists of email addresses to their customers, with no way to verify this information or make sure it stays accurate. Conversely, some email list cleaning services help companies maintain the accuracy of their contacts but don’t provide new lists or e-mail addresses.

To improve sales, you need to have accurate data and a fresh source for new leads. It’s best to find a provider that can help you both reach new contacts and keep your existing database accurate so that you can build a healthy sales funnel.

Pay attention to naming conventions

It’s a phrase repeated often in business, but it’s true: sales is about relationships. One of the worst ways to start off a relationship with a new prospect is to spell their name wrong, or write it in all capital letters like you are shouting at them. Take care to make sure that the names on your list are accurate and being input properly into your automation tool.

Use it!

It might seem obvious, but the most effective way to keep your list clean and generate sales from it is to actually send emails to people on it. Many business owners and salespeople get caught up trying to use software tools or database tricks to keep their email lists accurate even though they don’t send to it nearly as much as they should. Every time you send to your email list, it cleans itself by telling you which messages bounce – but the onus is still on you to remove the dirt by deleting and/or updating inaccurate email addresses.

For more information on how to use your email list for successful marketing, download YesData’s new white paper and offers: